Greeks vs. Romans: TASTY CHEESECAKE BAKE OFF | Ancient Recipes with Sohla | Home.Made.Nation

Sohla hosts a bake-off between the Greeks and Romans to determine the champs of ancient cheesecake, in this episode of Ancient Recipes with Sohla.

Watch Sohla recreate Roman bread & cheese from Pompeii here: https://youtu.be/Xx06rItYoac

RECIPES:

For Cato’s Libum:
Ingredients:
-2 lbs of fresh farmer’s cheese
-1 lb of white flour
-1 egg
-15 or so bay leaves
-a little olive oil

Recipe:
1. Add the farmer’s cheese to a bowl & pound it until it’s smooth.
2. Add the flour to the cheese and mix well.
3. Add the egg to the flour & cheese mixture and mix well until there is an even consistency.
4. Shape the mixture into a loaf. Add bay leaves to the bottom of the testum. Place the cheese loaf on the bay leaves. Close the testum & place it in coals or in an oven.
5. Cook for about 10-15 minutes

For Athenaeus’ Cheesecake:
Ingredients:
-2 quarts of whole goat’s milk
-2 cups of honey

Recipe:
1. Add the milk to a large pot & bring to a boil.
2. Reduce the heat & add the honey to the milk. Simmer until curds start to form. Stir as often as needed to make sure it doesn’t burn.
3. Line a colander with cheesecloth. Pour the honey & milk mixture through the cheesecloth-lined colander. Let it sit until the whey drains out.
4. Put a sieve on top of the cheese. Flip the cheese into the sieve. Let it sit & continue to drain until it comes together.

#AncientRecipes

Subscribe for more HOME.MADE.NATION shows: http://mylt.tv/SubscribetoFYI

Check out exclusive HOME.MADE.NATION content:
Website – https://www.aetv.com/home-made
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HomeMadeNation/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/HomeMadeNation
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/home.made.nation/

The hub of all things DIY, home improvement, decor and food, from household tips and projects you can try yourself to the stories and experiences of experts, inspiration truly has a home in HOME.MADE.NATION.

In this corner, officially dating back to 160 BC, coming to us from the “De Agricultura,” repping the Romans, the palate pleaser, the tummy teaser, we have Cato’s cheesecake– also known as libum. In the other corner, the underdog, officially dating back to 280 AD but likely much, much older, coming to us

From the learned banqueters, we have the gooey goddess of Greece, the cheese that’ll keep making you say yes, please, Athenaeus’ cheesecake. Hey, there. I’m Sohla El-Waylly, and this is “Ancient Recipe with Sohla.” In each episode, we take a dish you may recognize and attempt to recreate one of the oldest versions of it

To ever exist. So it’s a little cooking, a little history, and a whole lot of me. What’s not to love? For National Cheesecake Day, we’re doing an ancient cheesecake bake-off, a showdown between the Greeks and Romans to see whose bakers are the ancient champs of cheesecake.

Now, when I think of cheesecake, it’s the good old New York-style that comes to mind. You know, lots of cream cheese, lots of sugar, a nice, crumbly graham cracker crust. But the oldest recorded recipe for cheesecake goes all the way back to 160 BCE.

It was written down by a Roman statesman named Cato the Elder, in his work, “De Agricultura.” Now he wrote down a lot of cheesecake recipes, but the one that we’re making today is called libum. But cheesecakes have a long history in Greece that go back centuries before Cato wrote down his recipe.

But somehow, no one wrote down a recipe. Luckily, in 200 AD, the Greek speaker Athenaeus wrote down every kind of cheesecake he could think of– like, literally dozens of kinds of cheesecakes. Most of the cheesecakes don’t have recipes at all, and the ones that do are really vague.

But we chose this one to make. So this cheesecake doesn’t have a direct translation, but it roughly means under cheesecake. So for Cato’s cheesecake, his recipe’s really precise. We’re going to use 2 pounds of fresh cheese, 1 pound of flour, 1 egg, and some bay leaves and olive oil.

Athenaeus’ cheesecake is a lot more simple. It’s just going to be milk and honey that’s going to be curdled and turned into cheesecake. It’s not a very specific recipe. It just says, some milk, some honey, so we’ll see what it does. Now, neither of these cheesecakes

Are going to be anything like the modern cheesecake we know of today. One has no flour. The other one has no sweetener. And neither have cream cheese, because that wasn’t invented until 1872. So I’m expecting some different tastes, some different textures, and I’m wondering if Athenaeus’ cheesecake is going

To be a cheesecake at all. It sounds like dip, but we’ll find out. [music playing] All right, so I’m going to start by making Athenaeus’ cheesecake, which like I mentioned, the recipe is super vague. He said to put some honey into some milk. Those were his specific instructions.

So here, I have some milk. And to it, I’m going to add some honey. So basically, what we’re doing is we’re going to try to curdle the milk with the honey, which makes sense, because honey is slightly acidic but pretty slight. So if I were to curdle this much milk with lemon juice

Or vinegar, I would only need like a tablespoon and I’d be good. But here, I’ve got 2 quarts of goat milk and I’m going to need 2 whole cups of honey to get it to curdle. So first, I’m going to let this come up to a simmer.

And then we’re going to stir in the honey and let it separate. The recipe is super vague, so we’re going to take a little bit of what we learned from the Pompeii episode, where I made bread and cheese. So there’s a link below in the description

If you want to check that episode out. This has got to be for the fancy royals. There’s no way anyone’s just, like, pouring 2 cups of honey into something. I don’t know, unless honey was cheap back then. But it’s not now, for sure.

So once this comes to a boil, we’re going to add our honey and just let it separate. Then we’re just going to strain off– just like any other cheese, we’re going to strain off the curds from the whey and let it kind of have a second to hang and firm up.

And hopefully, we’re going to get, like, a cheesecake vibe. All right, so my milk is at a boil. Now– oh, yes it is. Hello. I’m going to add my honey. All right, so this is going in. And then we are going to let this milk separate

And then continue on with our other cheesecake. Want more honey action? So much honey. Oh, I see it. I see the curds happening. Wow, look at that. Here we go. Perfect. OK, so the acidity from the honey curdled our milk, so it’s ready to go.

And we’re going to take this up front and strain it. Whoa, look at that. Man, it’s such a nice color from that honey. OK, so we completed step one of Athenaeus’ cheesecake recipe, put some honey into some milk. We’ve let it curdle. Next up, squeeze the mixture dry.

So I’m going to pass it through a strainer to separate the curds from the whey. We’ve done this before– Pompeii. We’re doing it again– cheese time. There’s a lot of cheese happening in these ancient recipes. Cheese, stews. All right, so the curds on this cheese is actually really fine, so we’re going

To double up our cheesecake. I always like to moisten it a little bit, because it kind of stays in put– stays put. It kind of stays put. It stays in place. “Stays in put.” Stays in place when I go to strain. Maybe we need more layers. Let’s do that. Whoa. OK, yeah.

The water just kind of helps it stick to the walls. And then we are going to strain. This is so cool. It’s just honey and milk. Crazy. I think it’s pretty freakin’ cool. OK, let’s see. Here we go. I’m going to gently pour. Woo. Whoa. [laughs] It’s a cheese curd party. [horn blowing]

What’s crazy to me is this smells just like an Indian dessert, because it’s got that cooked milky flavor and then you got the honey. It looks like an Indian dessert, too. Squeeze the mixture dry. So we’re going to let this drain a little bit before we try to form it.

And in the meantime, I will work on Cato’s cheesecake. [music playing] So now we’re going to make Cato’s cheesecake. Unlike Athenaeus’, this recipe is very specific. We got quantities. We got technique. We got amounts. So I think we’re going to be able to duplicate this really well.

So we’re going to start with some farmer’s cheese. And he says to pound that until it’s smooth, so here we go. So actually, the Romans adopted a lot of Greek cheesecake recipes once they got there, and then it became really popular and spread throughout Europe. But this version of cheesecake by Cato

Is before cheesecake became, like, a really pan-European thing. So I’ve got 2 pounds of farmer’s cheese. I’m going to smush it until it’s nice and smooth. And then we’re going to add 1 pound of flour, 1 egg, and then that gets baked with a little bit of bay leaf and olive oil.

Pretty simple. There’s no sugar in here, so I’m really interested to see how this comes out. I feel like it’s going to be more like a cheese bread, almost, than a cheesecake. Cheesecake came to America with the colonizers, but cream cheese wasn’t invented until 1872. So in the beginning, they were making

Cheesecake with cottage cheese. It wasn’t until some guy named Arnold Reuben– he’s the one who has the claim of making the first cheesecake back in 1929, when he was trying to make a cheese pie. But I just think it’s funny that he didn’t make the Reuben. CREW: He did invent the Reuben.

He did invent the Reuben? CREW: Yep. Wow. This guy is busy. He invented the Reuben and cheesecake? Wild. Cheesecake is kind of like a pie, though. Like, I feel like we could have a long debate over whether cheesecake is a cake or a pie.

All right, so my farmer’s cheese is nice and smooth, so I’m going to add 1 pound of flour. But we cannot add our flour until we give a shout-out to Sirius, the goddess of the harvest, to bless this flour. [vocalizing] Actually blessed? Shall we go in? Blessed? OK, here we go.

Flour is going in. I’m just going to keep pounding, mashing until everything’s evenly mixed. I feel like this is going to be kind of like a dough. It’s quite a lot of flour. Farmer’s cheese is really, like, wet, so I see why you would need some flour.

He did mention if you wanted a lighter cheesecake, you could add half as much flour. But we’re not modifying it. We’re going with what he wrote as his OG preference, you know? Just keep smushing it around. So even though the first written recipe of cheesecake didn’t come around until 160 BCE,

It’s believed to have been around for longer than that. Even Plato and Socrates wrote about cheesecake, because they were such a big fan. It was in one of Plato’s plays, “The Poet.” It was just, like, a small mention. But it’s interesting that it even survived, because he

Burned all of his poems and plays when he switched over to becoming a philosopher. I feel like I’m going to add my egg. Let’s go in here. This is getting really stiff, so I think I’m going to switch to kneading it with my hands like a dough.

It really does feel like a dough. We’re developing some gluten here. I feel like this is going to be, like, kind of dense and tough. But you know, who knows? Maybe I’m wrong. A lot of kneading, too– all the greatest ancient recipe hits. [music playing]

OK, so it’s said that at the first Olympic games, in 776 BCE, that the Olympians were fed cheesecakes before competing for energy. I don’t know if that’s true, because when I have a cheesecake, I do just want to take a nap. I definitely think I’m going to need a nap after this.

This is incorrectly named. This is cheese bread. There’s trouble with the translation. OK, so I think this is nicely mixed and ready to put in our testum. [music playing] OK, so for Cato’s cheesecake, we’re going to bake it in a testum. Ooh. OK, check it out.

So this is an ancient Roman terracotta portable oven. They used to cook meat and cakes in here on the go. You’re going to see– we’re going to take this outside and it’s going to be buried in coals with coals on top. And our cheesecake is going to bake on the inside.

So we’re putting our cheesecake right in there. I’m going to grease it up with a little olive oil. OK, here we go. And now, in his recipe, he says to line the bottom with some bay leaves. I feel like the bay leaves are going to give it a really

Nice, woodsy aroma, but it’s also kind of like nature’s parchment. He said about 15. We got about 15 in there. Very specific recipe. OK, I’m going to try and plop this into there. Now he didn’t say to do this, but I’m going to grease up my hands a little

Bit, because it’s very sticky. Here we go. All right, cheesecake buddy, we’re going in. What I think is really cool is this is just like an original Dutch oven. You know? Boom. OK, now this lumpy little boy is going to bake, and we will see what happens. [music playing]

So now that we’ve wrapped up with Cato’s very precise cheesecake recipe, let us return to the vagueness of Athenaeus. So put some honey into some milk. Let the mixture dry. I think that’s what this is. Or squeeze the mixture dry. I think we got here. I think this is correct.

And then toss it in a dish and let it curdle. So I’m going to transfer our mostly drained cheese into this bowl. Now, you didn’t see this, but it took four men and myself to figure out how many times we’re going to flip this baby. And this is what we decided on.

This is the amount of times. OK, and then toss it in a dish and let it curdle. It’s curdled, so we’re going to move on to the next step. If you have a small sieve, put the dish upside down on top of them and then let the whey drain off.

So I’m going to give this another flip. Now, in earlier translations of this recipe, it sounded a little bit like this had a crust. But the updated translation shows us that it doesn’t actually have a crust. What they’re referring to is the cool pattern left on top by the sieve.

So I’m going to flip it over again. It’s going to continue to drain. And then we’re going to flip it over one last time, so this is going to end up being the top and hopefully leave, like, a nice impression from the sieve. Now, this whey over here, I am not going

To let this whey go to waste. This whey is super, super freaking delicious. Hold on. It’s so good. It’s so good, because it’s just milk and honey. I think that it would be fantastic to add some lemon juice and sparkling water to this and make milk and honey lemonade.

I just feel like that sounds like something that a hipster bar in Brooklyn would sell. Add a little bourbon– whoa. That’s a good time. I think that I’m going to actually keep this, and let it hang out for a few days, and see if it ferments, make like a whey beer.

I don’t know. I’m into it. So I don’t know what they did back then, but I doubt they wasted that, because it’s super, super tasty. But we’re going to use this bowl again for this final flip, for the let the whey drain off part. OK, here we go.

Flip it over, and we’re flipping again. Whoa. That worked. And we’re going to let this hang out. And hopefully, we’re going to lose more of this whey. It’s going to compress into more of, like, a cheesecake, and we’re going to come back to it.

And in the meantime, we are going to go outside and we are cooking, once again, on real fires. I’m super excited. I’m going to take the testum out, and we’re going to cover it in coals. Let’s go. So I’m going to put on my ancient– oh gosh, the ancient price tag’s still on.

OK, I think this is exactly what the Romans would have used. [music playing] Does it feel nicely nestled? Are these coals on top hot? They are. They are hot. [laughs] All right, so we brought our testum back in. I thought it was going to take an hour,

But it actually only took like 10 minutes. What you didn’t see after we turned off the cameras was it started smoking a lot from the inside. And it was really cool, because it was actually coming from the bay leaves we put inside. And it turned it into this really cool, smoked orange color.

This has had a couple hours to cool, so it’s easy enough for me to handle. But let me pull it out of here. We got a little ash in there, but you know what? It’s ancient. No big deal. All right, we’re going to pull this out. This is a sturdy cheesecake.

Now, the edges of it do look like pizza crust. The bay leaves totally burned, so I don’t think I’m going to be eating those. They did their job. It kept the cheesecake from sticking. Thank you to the bay leaf gods for sacrificing yourself like this for our cheesecake. OK, this guy feels dense.

It’s like a loaf of bread. It smells just like pizza. It’s kind of crazy. OK, now final flip on Athenaeus’ cheesecake. It’s been sitting here and it drained a bit more from the last time you saw it. It’s a little bit sturdier, you know? OK, final flip onto our golden platter.

Hopefully, we get a nice design from our sieve. It released. Did you hear that? It was really satisfying. It just went– [cheesecake glopping out] And– OK, all right. We see some lovely dots left from the pattern of our sieve. it feels a little bit like a cheesecake mousse,

So I’m excited to dig in. So now we are ready for the ultimate ancient cheesecake showdown. [music playing] [non-english singing] In this corner, officially dating back to 160 BCE, coming to us from “De Agricultura,” repping the Romans, the palate pleaser, the tummy teaser, we have Cato’s cheesecake– also known as libum.

In the other corner, the underdog, officially dating back to 200 AD but likely much, much older, coming to us from the learned banqueters, we have the gooey goddess of Greece, the cheese that’ll keep making you say yes, please, Athenaeus’ cheesecake. [applause sound effect] [music playing] Now before we taste our cheesecakes,

We got to give it up to the god of cheese, Aristaeus. If there is a god or goddess of cheese out there, they deserve all of the thanks. OK. Oh, and we have one other surprise. You know, just in case I needed a refresher on what a New York

Cheesecake tastes like, we’ve got one to see how it is, how it compares to the ancients. So I’m going to dig in to Cato’s to start. He does have the first recorded written recipe, anyways, right? This smells so good. I really– going in there, I didn’t

Have a lot of high hopes, because it’s just a lot of flour blended into cheese. But it smells incredible. Like, the fact that we were able to take it out there and cook it on charcoal I think made all the difference, because it smells really good.

The outside almost looks like the rind of smoked mozzarella. Hey, that looks like cheesecake. Right? That’s a lot more like cheesecake than I thought it would be. It’s kind of insane. The bottom got a little bit more cooked and crisped up, and it kind of formed a crust just naturally.

I was not expecting that. That’s pretty crazy. OK, should I dig in? Cheesecake one? Let’s see how you did, Cato. Wow. The texture feels very much like a New York-style cheesecake. This is a little bit crazy. OK. [music playing] Hm. Hm. This is very surprising.

It’s got a little bounce in it, because we did develop some gluten with the flour. But it’s surprisingly creamy. Even though there’s no salt or sugar, it’s not bland. That smoke added a lot of flavor. But I do just want a bunch of honey on top of this. But it’s really surprisingly delicious.

Do you see the close-up of how creamy that looks? I was not expecting this. I really thought it was going to be terrible, but yeah, it’s really good. It’s like a cross between a cheesecake and a cheese bread, for sure. This crust is kind of cool.

It kind of crisped up a little bit. I wasn’t expecting that. It’s definitely dense. That’s for sure. OK, man, wild surprise. Now I’m going to try Athenaeus’. This is very soft, very, very tender. Oops, I think it’s a scooper. [laughs] OK. Really, really soft, super creamy. I’m going in. [music playing]

It’s super delicious. OK, something interesting happened here. Normally, when you make a fresh cheese like this and just curdle milk with acid, it’s kind of grainy. The curves are a little bit tough. But I think because we had so much sugar in there, it’s not grainy at all.

It’s just like super, super creamy. It does really feel a lot like a no-bake cheesecake. I think if this had more time to set up and chill, it would totally be sliceable. Mm. But it’s super delicious. It’s, like– it’s just concentrated milk and honey,

And it really tastes a lot like an Indian or Middle Eastern dessert, because a lot of them are based around milk and honey. And I kind of honestly– it reminds me a lot of Bangladeshi dessert called rasgulla, which is just, like, a ball of cheese floating in syrup.

So I kind of want to pour the whey on top, right? And have it like a rasgulla. OK, my folks out there who know what this is, you understand what I’m doing. This is so delicious. It’s kind of crazy. Mm. I love this cheesecake. I love this whey.

I’m definitely going to make this again. And I guess, since we’re here, let’s see how this guy does next to the OGs. OK, so now I’m going to cut into the New York-style cheesecake, see how this guy holds up to the OG gangsters, Cato and Athenaeus. Here we go.

A messy slice, but you know what? It’s going to work. Now, what’s kind of crazy is this New York-style cheesecake looks a lot like Cato’s cheesecake, the way it browned on top, the way it’s creamy on the inside. OK, here we go. This is the cheesecake I know. [music playing]

I mean, it’s delicious– tangy, creamy, light. So this is a showdown, after all. So who is going to be the cheesecake champ? Is it going to be Cato? Is it going to be Athenaeus? Now even though this came out a lot better than I thought,

I think the winner is clear in my mind. It goes to Athenaeus, baby. [triumphant music] [applause sound effect] This is going in my repertoire, for sure. Totally amazing. OK. If you liked this episode, to be sure to like and subscribe, and hit us up in the comments if there

Are any ancient or vintage recipes you want to see me try out. And I’ll see you next time.